How do I move my bees to a new hive?

Cedar runs through the procedure for moving bees from one hive into another.  

Thank you for joining us. today. We're going to do a hive swap, which means swapping the bees from this hive into another hive. This is a swarm we caught about a month ago on a mango tree just over here and we shook it in the hive and away they went. So it was a good time of year, it was springtime and they had plenty of resources, so they've built out all of the frames.

It is a grey, windy day and there has been a bit of rain, but seeing as these bees have been so gentle, we're going to risk doing a hive swap on a day like this. Normally you'd choose a day where it's warm and sunny and not too much wind, but let's see how we go. See if we can swap over all of the bees in this hive to our Flow Hive 2+ and we'll even put the super right on top as we go as well.

Locate the new hive in the same location as the original hive

We're gonna take off the inner cover. Now before we do that, I'm going to move them over because I want to put the new hive in the location where the bees are returning because they kind of GPS locate right to this location. So what I'm going to do is simply pick up this hive and put it over here. Then we're going to set up a new hive which we've already assembled and put a coat on right here where the old hive was. Now it's a little bit higher but the bees will work it out.

Now this hive, we have seen the queen right on the inner cover a couple of times, so I'll have a quick look for her in case she's dwelling up there again. I'm not seeing her. I'll just leave the cover leaning against the hive for the moment. So if the queen was on it, she could just walk straight back in to here.

Transfer the frames into the new hive

Now the aim of the game is simply to move all of these frames into this box. Quite an quite an easy task really. And as we go, we'll have a good look at the frames, check everything's happy and healthy.

We've got a bunch of brood, which is good to see. So we're happy already that we've got a queen that's continuing to lay because down the cells we can see really young larvae and if we look around we'll also see bee eggs, which is tiny little grain of rice down the bottom of the cells.

I’m going to put the frames into the nex box in the same position they were in the original hive. Unless there's a reason to change, we'll just keep the same position. That way we're less likely to get comb touching comb and issues with beetles in those areas where bees can't service. Next take another frame and we're just gonna keep moving them across

Ensure the frames are pressed together

So that's all our frames in now, which is great. And we were happy with the health of the colony and we were looking out for pests and diseases on the way through. So now all we need to do is put our excluder right on top of this, but, but before I do that I'm gonna shake these last bees in.

And so next an important little step is to make sure the frames are pressed together. You want any excess space to be on the edges, that way the spacing's right for them to draw their comb.

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